The Stories

The surveillance file on David Lewis spans over five decades from his student days in 1931 until several years after his death when the file was finally closed. At almost a thousand pages, the file includes transcripts of his speeches, newspaper articles, intercepted telegrams, and RCMP official memos speculating about David's political and

social associations. Portions of the file are still censored as they pose risks to national security. Reading through the file, Avi notes that the RCMP was most concerned with attempting to establish any communist affiliations. Yet, as a politician and activist, David Lewis was known to be vehemently anti-communist. The RCMP focuses on David's Eastern

David Lewis and his wife Sophie

European background and in establishing his original family name. The file seems to contain nothing to justify fifty years of spying.

In an attempt to find out more, Avi contacts both the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), who took over the file after its formation in 1984. Neither can nor will supply Avi with any information. Avi realizes he'll have to mount his own investigation. Armed with a copy of David's RCMP file (minus the censored sections) he heads to Montreal, the first home to the Lewis' in Canada, and McGill University where his grandfather's activities were first recorded.

David studied at McGill in the 1930s. Avi visits the McGill archives, which boast an impressive collection of articles and photographs about David from that period. He was a leading academic and activist at university and went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1932. The RCMP file later questions the validity of David's Rhode Scholar claim after he returns to Canada, but the archivist finds a newspaper article announcing David's scholarship; clearly, it was a matter of public record. Avi wonders at the RCMP's seeming inability to verify simple facts.

Moishe in 1940

Another question whose answer eluded the RCMP involved David's background and original family name. At the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) in Montreal, Avi continues his investigation. There he discovers that, according to passenger declarations, David arrived in Montreal on a ship via Liverpool, England with his mother Rose Lazarovitch, and his brother and sister in 1921. David's father (Avi's great great grandfather), Moishe Losz (Lewis) had arrived some years earlier and was working in the textile industry. The family changed their name from the Jewish Polish Losz to Lewis shortly after arriving in Canada.

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